Unexpected

Chapter 18

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to @ks_dreamer, you should check out her story, Tangled--super intriguing and well done! http://www.wattpad.com/story/27196699-tangled 

Thanks for reading, voting, and commenting!!

I was wrong. For the next few weeks, every time I went anywhere, to the store, to get my hair cut, whatever, by the time I emerged, there were at least a couple of reporters or even just normal people with their cell phone cameras, hoping to get a shot of me they could sell to the tabloids. I took to wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses every day, to more easily avoid making any sort of eye contact that would encourage them.

I persisted in keeping my normal routine, however, determined that all this wouldn’t keep me from living my normal life. Perhaps Maggie and I got takeout more than we’d ever done previously, but I could pretend that was just for convenience -- we could get back to studying quicker if we didn’t actually leave the apartment.

Finally, one day there was no one there -- no photographers, no people with video cameras -- when I emerged from the grocery store. I figured they must have just got tired of my boring routine and was thanking my lucky stars, until I got home.

As I entered the apartment, I heard Maggie call, “Charlie?” from the living room

“Yeah, be right there.” I put the groceries that required refrigeration away quickly, then went into talk to my roommate, who was sitting on the couch with her laptop open on her legs.

“What’s up?”

“So...it’s probably no big deal, but Alex went out with somebody else.”

Although I tried to keep my face calm, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. “You haunting the celebrity sites again, Mags?”

“Yeah, well, I still have the Google alerts set for both of you and mostly it’s nothing, but today...today he took some old girlfriend or classmate or something to this event with him and I got about a billion notifications about it so I checked it out.”

“Jeez, Maggie, I didn’t know you were still doing that! God, as if you don’t have enough going on, you have to get an email notifying you every time some site talks about my ugly shoes or the crappy food I buy at the store.” Both of those things were real stories that popped up the last time I looked myself up. And those were some of the nicer ones, which is why I no longer looked at any site that might ever have anything about either one of us. Particularly hurtful were the British sites that slammed Alex for having anything to do with an American, that it was an insult to all English women that he found them so lacking that he had to find a girl from another country.

“It’s no big deal, like I said, mostly it’s nothing and I just ignore it, but I just thought you might want to know about it.”

“Well, that explains why no one was outside the grocery store today, they’ve moved on to a fresher story.”

“Are you ok?” she asked, clearly concerned about me.

“Yeah, it’ll be amazing to get my life back. I didn’t expect him to never go out with anyone ever again, Maggie, it’s seriously fine. I have to go put away the rest of the groceries, but thanks again for telling me.”

I returned to the kitchen and put everything away, or at least I think I did, I was in a trance and wasn’t really paying any attention to what I was doing. I ran up to my bedroom as soon as I was done and curled up in the rocking chair in the corner. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to look at the pictures or not. Not was the smart choice, right?

What I’d told Maggie was true and it really would be nice to not have the cameras around as glaring reminders of what I’d had with Alex. And I wasn’t mad at Alex for going out with someone. Obviously after any break up, someone has to be the first one to move on. But it’d only been a month and I hadn’t even thought about anyone else, let alone dated...of course, I had no social life, and he was one of the most eligible bachelors in the world, so not exactly the same thing.